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Archive for November, 2012
Tell the BLM to Establish Strong Rules for Fracking on Public Lands
Posted by EcoWatch: Natural Resources Defense Council on November 30th, 2012
EcoWatch: Sign this petition to tell the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to issue strong rules for federal fracking leases on public lands.
Signing this petition sends an email to Mike Pool, acting director of the BLM, and the Department of Interior. The BLM`s draft rule on fracking is a start and long overdue, but as long as fracking is occurring on public, Indian or split estate lands, the oil and gas industry should be held to the highest standards. The BLM`s rules should be a model for the nation that...
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UN Climate Boss: No Support for Tough Climate Deal
Posted by Associated Press: Karl Ritter on November 30th, 2012
Associated Press: he United Nations climate chief is urging people not to look solely to their governments to make tough decisions to slow global warming, and instead to consider their own role in solving the problem.
Approaching the half-way point of two-week climate talks in Doha, Christiana Figueres, the head of the U.N.'s climate change secretariat, said Friday that she didn't see "much public interest, support, for governments to take on more ambitious and more courageous decisions."
"Each one of us needs...
High winds, heavy rain to batter California through the weekend
Posted by Reuters: Mary Slosson on November 30th, 2012
Reuters: Heavy rain and winds of up to 80 miles per hour were forecast in California's mountain and coastal regions when a storm rolls through the U.S. West Coast this weekend, prompting warnings of mud flows and flooding.
High wind advisories were issued for Northern and Central California, and transportation officials warned against campers and trailers crossing bridges, including San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.
"Meteorologists tell us the storm system is 'rapidly evolving' and that it will be...
Accelerated Ice Sheet Melt At Both Poles Documented in Study
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 30th, 2012
Yale Environment 360: The ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are losing three to five times as much ice annually as they did two decades ago, a rate of ice loss equivalent to sea level rise of 0.04 inches per year, according to a new study supported by NASA and the European Space Agency. In an analysis of data from 10 different satellite missions, the international team of 47 experts calculated that the rate of melt in Greenland is five times greater than during the mid-1990s. While the new findings on total ice loss...
Canada: Enbridge’s Proposal to Ship Tar Sands Oil Eastward Puts Ontario and Quebec Communities at Risk
Posted by EcoWatch: None Given on November 30th, 2012
EcoWatch: Pipeline giant Enbridge filed yesterday to seek approval to reverse its Line 9B pipeline to bring more dangerous tar sands oil eastward to Montreal for export. Groups in Canada and the U.S., including Environmental Defence, Greenpeace Canada and Natural Resources Defense Council, are calling on the Canadian National Energy Board to review the full scope of this tar sands proposal.
“This project could turn Ontario into a sewer for dangerous tar sands oil, putting communities at risk of oil spills...
Carbon dioxide could reduce crop yields
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 30th, 2012
ScienceDaily: The carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere continues to climb and heat up the climate. The gas is, however, indispensable for plants, as they use the carbon it provides to form glucose and other important substances. Therefore, the more carbon dioxide the better? The equation is unfortunately not as simple as that. The plants, which ensure our basic food supply today, have not been bred for vertical growth but for short stalks and high grain yields.
Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of...
United States: Call Gov. Cuomo and NY’s DEC, Say No to New Fracking Regulations
Posted by EcoWatch: None Given on November 30th, 2012
EcoWatch: This week, under Governor Cuomo’s direction, the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) filed a new set of fracking regulations with the Secretary of State. But the DEC does not plan to make its new regulations available to the public until Dec. 12 for a public comment period that will only last until Jan. 11. DEC is required to finalize these new regulations by Feb. 27.
The DEC’s action wholly undercuts the governor’s promise to let the science of the Department of Health’s (DOH) review...
Extreme weather calls for action, U.N. climate chief says
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 30th, 2012
Reuters: DOHA (Reuters) - Extreme weather from melting Arctic ice to Superstorm Sandy shows snail-paced U.N. climate talks have to do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the head of the U.N. weather agency and its climate chief said on Wednesday.
"Climate change is taking place before our eyes," Michel Jarraud, the head of the U.N.'s weather agency, said of the shrinking of ice floating on the Arctic Ocean to a record low in September and other extremes.
And the first 10 months of 2012 were the ninth-warmest...
Antarctica, Greenland ice definitely melting into sea, and speeding up, experts warn
Posted by NBC: Miguel Llanos on November 30th, 2012
NBC: What had been a blurry picture about polar ice -- especially how it impacts sea levels -- just got a whole lot clearer as experts on Thursday published a peer-reviewed study they say puts to rest the debate over whether the poles added to, or subtracted from, sea level rise over the last two decades.
"This improved certainty allows us to say definitively that both Antarctica and Greenland have been losing ice," lead author Andrew Shepherd of the University of Leeds in Britain, told reporters....
Study gives new benchmark for how much ice is melting
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 30th, 2012
Climate Central: The vast ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica have begun melting and sliding into the ocean as heat-trapping greenhouse gases continue to build in the atmosphere. How much and how fast the ice is disappearing, however, has been poorly understood, because the satellites that measure it haven't always agreed. But a report published Thursday in Science has cleared up much of the uncertainty.
A team of no fewer than 47 scientists from 36 laboratories, looking at data from 10 different satellites,...